


Are you playing with Dan?

by sierraadeux



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: First Meetings, Gaming, M/M, Meet-Cute, Twitch Streamer Dan, Youtuber/Streamer Phil, but make it among us
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:01:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27691085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sierraadeux/pseuds/sierraadeux
Summary: of meeting in among us lobbies and the logistics of throwing a game.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 69
Kudos: 178





	Are you playing with Dan?

**Author's Note:**

> wowie i haven't started and finished writing something in one day in soooooo long, but something about this compelled me. this is my open call for more dnp streamer aus pls thank u

“Are you playing with PJ and co again?” Phil reads off the chat while it’s still going slow, giving him the opportunity to shake off that initial anxiety that vibrates through his bones whenever he just starts up a live. 

It’ll settle eventually, when he’s not so hyper focused on if his audio is working or if he’s accidentally settling into a resting bitch face that will end up in some well meaning but super embarrassing trending hashtag. It’s always those first few minutes, and once they pass his shoulders and jaw will relax, letting him enjoy the game and bant back and forth with chat without that wide eyed spooked deer expression flashing on his face. 

That makes it sound like he hates streaming. He really doesn’t, he loves it actually. The gradual shift of his content felt freeing, a smaller, closer knit group of people following him to a new channel for gaming, a sense of community and casual vibes returning after feeling so much pressure to be _AmazingPhil_ on main. 

Here, he’s just Phil. 

_Well_ , except for the occasional joke from the chat calling him Mr. Amazing—he’ll allow that, finds it a little funny, actually. 

Here, he can let an f-bomb slip and not have it be some sort of scandal. He can casually joke about cute boys or tell vague stories of dates gone wrong while yeeting a Bokoblin into a ravine with nothing but a soup ladle without ten thousand hate comments or—worse—ten thousand people sleuthing through his personal Facebook account to find more details. 

And best of all, he can make people happy just by doing one of his favorite things: playing games with his friends. 

The money isn’t all that bad either, but he digresses. 

“I’m not actually! Will invited me to this lobby,” Phil answers, fiddling with his mic settings. “I think PJ is streaming the new Spider-Man right now. Cheeky spon.” 

“Please play it,” he reads. “I’ve been saving that one for myself, soz. We can’t play _every_ game together.” 

“Before I tweet, how’s the volume guys?” He leans forward to scan the onslaught of chat messages, a lot of dabbing and rainbows amongst quite a few ‘ _sounds good’_ s. 

“You haven’t played Among Us in so long,” he reads. “I know! I think we all got too used to each other’s play styles that it became impossible to play.” Phil laughs. “I don’t think I’ve played with most of the people in this lobby though so this will be fun!” 

“Play with Corpse, Kacey demands. I don’t think I’m cool enough to play with those streamers, guys. I would just pee instantly.” 

“Yeah, yeah. Phil pees right in the lobby the second any of them say words.” 

“Stop bringing your kinks up, it's barely been five minutes. Hey! That’s a fear pee not a sexy pee.” 

“No, I’m not elaborating on the sexy pee. Sexy pee doesn’t exist.” 

“Why is pee your branding? Luke, it’s not my branding. I don’t know why you would think that.” In a cruel act of violence nearly everyone in the chat starts to flood it with his custom ' _vase with yellow liquid'_ emote. 

“Chaaaaat,” Phil wines, bringing a hand up to his mouth in a sad attempt to hide his laughter. “Ignore that Luke, I don’t know how that got there. I definitely didn’t commission that.” 

Today, pee jokes are apparently the thing that loosens his muscles and get him settled for the next few hours of streaming. He wishes he could say that was out of the ordinary—maybe he loves his viewers just a little bit. 

“Shh,” Phil holds his finger up to his lips, “I’m gonna tweet the stream and join the lobby, no more pee talk. Time to behave.” 

“When have we ever behaved? Amy asks,” Phil says as he presses send on his tweet, chuckling. He scrunches up his face and gets closer to his camera. “We _always_ behave here.” 

“Oh my god, are you playing with Dan?” Phil reads. “Dan who? I don’t know who I’m playing with, I think they’re mostly Will’s friends. We’ll find out together,” he says as he clicks over to join the group on Discord. 

“Phil!” 

“Phil’s here!”

“Code is in #codes, Phil.” 

“Hi Phil!”

Phil’s headphones are filled with an onslaught of greetings the second he joins the call. 

“Ahh!” Phil squeaks, getting a round of light laughter in response. He double checks his screen, making sure the cute corgi banner he spent far too much time making on photoshop is covering the code so he doesn’t leak it—again. 

“I’m in, I’m in,” he says as his little blue character hops off the bench, still clad in the cat ears he hasn’t taken off since the Halloween update. He swears he will send a very strongly worded letter to the developers if they decide to ever remove them. 

He notes the green 10/10 in the corner. “Oh no, were you all waiting on me?” 

“No, not at all. Dan just got here like a minute before you did,” Will says. 

“Dan,” Phil repeats before his brain catches up to his tongue. “My chat was just asking if I was playing with a Dan,” he says with a laugh. He mutes on Discord, quickly saying, “You guys know too much,” before unmuting again.

“They were?” An unfamiliar voice chimes in. “That’s funny, we probably have an overlap.” It’s a nice voice, all deep and smooth in his ear. Posh, but not overly. Similar to what Phil hears on the rare occasion he leaves his flat, though this voice stands out.

Phil never really got the whole fawning over a voice thing that’s become so common amongst streamers lately, but this one? Maybe he’s starting to understand. 

“Hi, I’m Dan,” the good voice says. Phil has to stop himself from frowning when he looks at the bubble that pops up and it’s just a zoomed in fisheye picture of a cat. Maybe he’s too keen—a little thirsty. Maybe he has no reason to pout when his own Discord picture is of shook Pikachu. 

Maybe that’s exactly why he’s so painfully single, already starting to hear wedding bells in his head at a faceless voice. 

“You two don’t know each other?” another voice asks before Phil can wrangle his singular gay braincell. 

“No,” they both say at the same time, followed by laughter that Phil kind of wants to bottle and keep a tight lid on for a rainy day. 

_Christ._ Phil shakes his head, trying to clear it of whatever the hell is going on. “I don’t think I know, like, anyone here, actually,” he says. 

“Okay,” Will says with a clap that echoes in Phil’s ears, “introductions, then!” 

Phil really, really tries to pay attention. But as everyone does a quick intro, all he can hear is, “ _Hi, I’m Dan,”_ over and over. 

“I can’t believe we have _two_ catboys in the lobby,” someone— _Jessica?_ Phil thinks, he really should have been paying attention—says. Phil’s eyes scan all the little colorful jelly beans running around the lobby, stopping at the black one standing still in the corner with _dan_ over its head and the same cat ears on. 

“The cat ears stay on during s- Among Us,” Dan says, not missing a beat. 

“I’m not changing,” Phil says. 

“Neither am I! This is my branding.” Dan wiggles his jelly bean around. 

“Oh, is it now?” 

“Can I start or are you two gonna have a go?” 

“Wha-”

“You can start.” 

Just as the screen is going to black, nearly everyone muted, Dan whispers, “There can only be one,” low and menacingly into his mic before muting himself. 

Phil spends the first thirty seconds of the round screaming on his stream and running from the black jelly bean chasing him around the entire map—despite neither of them actually being the imposter. 

And it is definitely not the start of anything at all. 

-

“Ahh!” Phil yells as he slices, meat flopping as he darts away from the body. Black flashes past him before he’s even left the crime scene.

“Noooooooooo,” he whines, “the lights are on! Dan totally saw that.” Phil pouts, dramatically jutting out his bottom lip to the camera as Dan reports the body and everyone unmutes. 

They’ve been playing for a good hour now, and Phil has yet to get imposter once, so of course he’d get caught in the first round on his first kill. That’s just his luck. 

“Meat is right outside office.” 

“Oh only one died?” 

“That was a long round, I was so afraid of walking into a morgue.” 

“That’s oddly specific.” 

“Yeah, kinda sus.” 

“Excuse me!”

“You see anything Dan?” 

“No. No one was around. I think it was an old body.” 

Is he…? There’s no way Dan didn’t see him. 

“Did you check vitals?” 

“No, I came from gas.”

“Did anyone?” 

“No.” 

“Nope.” 

“We definitely don’t know enough, then.” 

“Can someone scan with me, I’m scared?” 

Votes start popping up and Phil is just looking from his screen to the camera with wide eyes. He’s really getting away with this. 

Everyone skips and Phil lets out the breath he was holding in when they’re back around the meeting table. 

“Oh my god,” Phil says to the chat while he does a few circles around it before going down to specimen. “He didn’t see that? How did he not see that?” 

He sees the chat start zooming in his peripheral as he walks down the hallway, he stops to fake his favorite task to fake—simon says—to give it a read.

“He did?!” Phil starts laughing, wheezing a bit at how absolutely ridiculous his chat is going. “Do I need to wipe my glasses? He’s definitely not the other imposter? Yeah, he’s crew.” Phil looks away from the chat as two people come down from top decontamination. He pretends to finish simon, then goes up. “Why did he do that then?” 

He reads the chat as decon blasts him. “He _wants_ me to win?” he asks incredulously, his voice going all high and stupidly transparent. 

He looks away from chat and slices the person doing wires in the bathroom as a cover for his burning red cheeks. He runs in a panic, passing black in the lab hall. Phil wiggles his little cyan body frantically and Dan stops in his tracks. 

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Phil tells chat. Dan wiggles his body back and starts to run in the other direction, the same as Phil was just going. “Oh my god it worked,” he says as he leads Dan away from the body, all the way to the other side of the map. 

They buddy up. Evil Phil holding his third imposter’s hand as he follows Dan to his tasks and kills along the way. Dan ignores every single one of them, only reporting one and somehow managing to get Phil’s partner thrown in the lava for Phil’s kill. 

Phil doesn’t think he’s giggled this much in his life. 

He’s sure the jig is up when they’re down to four—unless he can manage his cool down, Phil’s going to have to leave it to the fifty/fifty. He could possibly swing it if he kills Dan, because surely Dan wouldn’t throw the entire game for a bit of fun, but Dan instantly disappears when the round starts. 

“I am sweating. I’m literally going to pee. Or give birth.” 

Phil calls reactor. 

“I am giving birth right now. Where is Dan?!” 

In a panic, Phil slices the first jelly bean he sees. It isn’t Dan. He instantly self reports. 

“Dan, Dan, Dan,” Phil acts as though he’s out of breath and panicking—he kind of is. “Dan it’s Will he sliced her _right in front of me_!” 

“NO I DIDN’T!” Will shouts. “Dan you _just_ saw me!” 

“I didn’t see you,” Dan says coolly. 

“Oh my god! Hello? I literally just passed you, there’s no way I killed.” 

“Dan, he has imposter vision!” 

“Dan, it’s a self report.” 

“I am voting with my heart.” The little voted bubble pops up next to Dan’s name. 

“Who did you vote for? Dan? Daniel! I’m innocent!” Will continues to panic as Phil sits back with his hands over his mouth, desperately trying to keep himself from laughing. He has no idea if Dan is voting his way or not. Probably not—he seems really competitive from the past hour they’ve played and not like the type to throw—but his acting has been so incredible this entire game that Phil can’t help but feel like he’s won regardless. 

Playing with Dan like this actually makes losing… fun? 

Phil locks in his vote and seals his fate. The entire chat gasps as the vote is revealed, Phil’s ears filled with shouting and laughter and immense amounts of chaos as Will is flung into the lava, followed by the winning screen. 

“Dan! Did you know?!” 

The loud group goes silent, waiting for Dan’s response. 

Dan’s mic unmutes to a low, velvety chuckle. “Yeah.” 

The entire lobby lights up again. 

“He was doing so well!” Dan adds, something warm in his voice that settles right into Phil’s chest. 

Phil _actually_ has to fake a bathroom break just so he has time away from the camera to cool his red cheeks and wipe the smitten look off his face. 

It almost works, but the second he hears Dan’s voice again he’s right back to giggly teenager Phil. He can’t tell what’s more embarrassing: the fact that he’s in his thirties, the fact that he doesn’t even know what this guy looks like, or the fact that his chat seems to be catching on. 

For whatever reason, none of it bothers him in the slightest. 

He has a feeling this is going to turn into a long stream. 

-

“Do your tasks, Erin says. I don’t feeeeeel like it,” Phil says, his little ghost body floating by the table in his peripheral as he focuses on reading his chat, thanking any new subs he missed before he was brutally murdered twenty seconds into the game. 

“It’s okay, we haven’t been winning with tasks anyway.” 

“Noooo, I’m not a bad crew mate!” 

“Kelly says to look at Dan’s stream.” Phil cocks his head to the side. “Why?” 

It’s definitely tempting. But he really shouldn’t do that while he’s streaming, right? 

“He has a cat?” Phil reads. “What? Is Norman cam not enough for you guys? You’re double timing me with another man,” Phil gasps, pretends to be scandalized. 

His entire chat is just overflowing with the same requests to pull up Dan’s stream. 

“Alright, alright. Where is he streaming? On here?” 

“No? Twitch? Thanks- oh no I am not reading your user aloud, Philisafurry. Wait. Oops.” 

Phil ducks his head to hide his smirk and opens a new tab, typing in _twitch.tv/danielhowell_ and hitting enter like his life depends on it. 

At least his chat is busy sending hundreds of Phil’s custom _definitely not Phil in a fursuit_ emote when the page loads. 

From the voice, Phil was expecting hot. He was not, however, expecting _this_ hot. 

Dan has one of those really swish set ups, a slow gradient of rainbow lights behind him as he stares at his screen. The lights would normally distract Phil, but they do nothing of the sort as he stares at Dan. 

Pink shifts behind him, washing the color over his cheeks and the curly hair escaping out from under big chunky headphones. Phil realizes that they come to two points at the top of his head, like cat ears, and the little lights in the center of the ears remain a soft pink even as the color behind him changes. 

For all that color in his lighting, everything else is starkly dark. He’s wearing a plain black jumper, has a dark shade on the nails of the hand he lifts to flick at a curl on his forehead, and when his eyes flick up to his camera, they’re a deep, dark brown. 

With the black gaming chair he’s sitting in, Phil has to blink quite a few times to believe what he’s seeing. 

Phil’s mouth pops open into a perfect ‘o’, looking over to his own chat. “Is that real?” he asks his chat, gesturing to the monitor they obviously can’t see—the one with the stupidly attractive guy streaming live on twitch with a fluffy black cat dozing on his very, _very_ nice shoulders. 

They can’t see Phil’s screen, but they obviously know what he’s talking about. 

_Yes_

_yeah!!!!!_

_She likes to sleep there_

_yeeeeeeee_

_isn’t he hot??????_

Phil huffs out a little laugh, grateful he wasn’t reading any of them aloud. With how hot his cheeks feel, he’d probably end up with a voice crack. 

When Phil looks back to Dan’s stream, he’s focusing on a task, eyes narrowed with a dimple poking into his cheek as he completes the maze and runs from the node. 

“Hah!” His sharp laugh startles Phil. “See? I learned to be patient. No more _Dan fucking up the node fifty times in a row_ compilatio- oh FUCK!” Dan’s screech is loud in Phil’s ears as he gets sliced, joining Phil in the jelly bean afterlife. 

Phil can’t help but snort. 

“That was homophobic,” Dan says, continuing on to do his tasks as a ghost. Choir bells start ringing in Phil’s ears, and he knows it isn’t either of their sub alerts. 

“Phil?” Dan snaps Phil back to reality from the small intimate wedding he was starting to plan in his head. 

“Yeah, Phil died first round. No he hasn’t said anything in dead chat. Shh, I’m not going to bother him.” 

Dan’s eyes start to go comically wide as he continues to read his chat. “Wait what? He’s in _my_ chat?” 

Phil slaps his hands over his mouth, looking over at his own camera with his brows all the way up his forehead—as if somehow Dan could see him. 

“Shut the fuck up, he’s not watching. God you’re all such trolls.” 

Phil’s caught expression quickly turns mischievous. He makes a few clicks, starts up a recurring subscription, and pops a few of Dan’s cute pride cat emotes into the chat for good measure. 

“Thank you for the one year su- _PHIL?!_ You _are_ here?” Pink deepens high on Dan’s cheeks, turning to a lovely red that shows up just above his jaw as well as he shakes his head. The lights behind him are fading green, not at all casting the blush on his face. 

Phil thinks he feels his heart physically do a somersault. He pops a few more of Dan’s emotes into the chat before clicking out, just as Dan’s interrogating him if he’s the reason why the task bar has been stuck just barely at the end. 

Losing that round was definitely worth it.

-

Phil’s Discord chimes with a friend request the second he says his goodbyes and thank you’s to the lobby and his stream. He smiles to himself as he accepts it, warmth threatening to bubble over at the prospects of Dan being just as keen as he is. 

He didn’t even want to leave, that’s how much he had been enjoying himself. It was hard to ignore the time or the grumble in his stomach though—and after four hours of streaming they all agreed it was a good time to stop. 

He stands from his chair and stretches in front of his setup, making a soft satisfied groan at the little pops in his bones. There’s one last glance at his monitor before he swipes his phone off his desk, pulling up the Domino’s app while he nearly skips to the bathroom to pee. 

The notifications start popping up on his screen just as he’s washing his hands. 

danielhowell: hey you’re in london right? 

danielhowell: wait that was super weird of me

danielhowell: pls ignore 

danielhowell: hi phil! dan here messaging you for the very first time def never messaged you before this 

danielhowell: it was fun playing with you if you want to play again sometime lmk!

Phil frantically dries his hands, pressing his cold fingers to his burning cheeks before tapping out a response. 

amazingphil: Haha. Yeah, I’m in London. 

danielhowell: nooooo you were supposed to ignore that

amazingphil: If you couldn’t tell I have a very hard time ignoring you 

amazingphil: Sorry! Way too forward lol 

danielhowell: i was literally going to ask you if you wanted to get dinner so don’t worry about being forward 

danielhowell: oops

Phil’s heart is either beating at maximum speed in his chest or has fallen right out of his ass—it’s impossible to keep track of, and the feelings are alarmingly similar.

amazingphil: Was? 

danielhowell: am 

danielhowell: i _am._ did you order food yet? 

amazingphil: What’s your Domino’s order? 

Phil follows the message with his address before he can chicken out. 

And it’s _definitely_ the start of something. 

**Author's Note:**

> *fleetwood mac voice* yooouuu you make losing fun  
> [tumblr!](https://sierraadeux.tumblr.com/post/635624825365364736/are-you-playing-with-dan-t-3517-words-danphil)


End file.
